Met chief slammed for ‘nonsense’ probe
CRESSIDA Dick faced a barrage of fresh criticism yesterday over the Metropolitan Police’s investigation into Partygate – including claims that she had thrown common sense ‘out of the window’.
The Met Commissioner was accused by senior former officer Dai Davies of launching a ‘nonsense’ inquiry into offences that were ‘not serious’.
In a scathing verdict on the decision to launch an inquiry into events held at Downing Street that allegedly breached coronavirus rules, the former chief superintendent and divisional commander told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It’s a mess and there’s no way around that. Common sense seems to have gone completely out of the window.
‘It’s got to be proportionate, and people at work sharing a cake or having a drink, where they’re working all day, and then launching a criminal inquiry over that, that is not proportionate.’
Separately, Nazir Afzal – former Chief Crown Prosecutor for NorthWest England – called on Dame Cressida to resign ‘or risk damaging the public’s trust in the police beyond repair’. In an article for this paper, below, he added: ‘Her lack of self-awareness is mind-blowing.’
And the Commissioner also faced criticism from Conservative MPs, who said the No10 party investigation was a ‘deplorable’ waste of public money given the scale of crime in London.
Hendon MP Matthew Offord said: ‘With an epidemic of knife crime hitting a record high in the last year, I would have thought the priorities of the Metropolitan Police should be focused upon keeping Londoners safe rather than on incidents that happened at Downing Street in the past. While kids are dying on the streets of London, their priority should be addressing that.’
Tory colleague Peter Bone said the Met inquiry was a ‘deplorable waste of police resources’. He added that Scotland Yard ‘should be focusing on catching hardened criminals and cracking down on the violent crime which shames parts of our capital – not launching inquiries into whether cake was served at No10 or who drank what in the Downing Street garden.’
The Met’s own crime figures show that in the two years to December just ten per cent of 454,572 violent attacks on people have been solved or cleared up, along with 5.5 per cent of 114,881 burglaries and 8.7 per cent of more than 50,000 robberies.
The Met Police responded last night by repeating a statement it issued last week, explaining that it had received material from the Cabinet Office and would ‘complete our investigations promptly, fairly and proportionately’.
‘Common sense has gone out of the window’